While the testing methodologies of blood, tissue, and genetic specimens are becoming increasingly sophisticated, the pre-analytic methods for handling these specimens and their accompanying clinical information remains archaic, subjecting patients to the potentially catastrophic consequences resulting from mislabeled specimens or inaccurate clinical information. The current state of the art acknowledges the primary importance of safely transporting specimens between the location where the biopsy or body fluid was taken, “the point of collection” (e.g. in a hospital room, a doctors clinic, endoscopy or surgical suite) and the laboratory.
Many existing solutions require multiple people at both sites to manually label and copy the critical clinical and patient information from papers that accompany each specimen into one or more computer databases, and to place tissues into individually hand-labeled formalin-filled specimen transport containers. Even in medical systems with strong information technology integration, the documentation of the physical characteristics of the specimens submitted for laboratory testing still relies on a verbal description of the tissue received. So, in addition to the safety risks brought on by the inevitable and occasional specimen mislabeling, existing solutions are markedly inefficient, leading to the unnecessary duplication of work, higher health-care costs, and poorer overall quality of care.
The present disclosure provides an integrated solution that automates manual tasks, eliminates duplicative efforts, and reduces the probability of errors during the process of taking and documenting multiple types of specimens.